Limitations of online cognitive tests

Fluid reasoning (often abbreviated Gf in CHC language) is the ability to detect a pattern or relation you have not memorised and to use it on the next item. It is closer to “figure out this new rule” than to “remember the capital of France.” Licensed batteries sometimes include matrix or series subtests as one slice of a much larger, normed composite. Eight original grids on this site are a classroom toy. They do not estimate Gf, do not replace Raven’s, and do not print a fluid IQ. Device lag, guessing and a tiny item set would wreck any serious estimate anyway. Übung, kein klinischer IQ.

Crystallized knowledge (Gc) is the residue of learning: vocabulary, general information, and procedures you were taught. It is not “less real” than fluid reasoning; it is a different CHC-style slice. A person can know many words and still struggle with a new matrix, or the reverse. Category fluency lite and verbal analogies lite borrow the flavour of verbal tasks. They are not a Wechsler Vocabulary subtest, not a school achievement battery, and not a crystallised IQ. Culture and language of the items matter: an English analogy is unfair as a “pure mind” score for someone who does not use that language daily. Übung, kein klinischer IQ.

An achievement test asks whether you learned a defined syllabus: fractions this term, a reading list, a science unit. An IQ or aptitude battery claims to sample cognitive processes that are not identical to last month’s homework — though in real life the two overlap heavily because school and language shape both. A mental-math lite on this site is neither a standardised achievement exam nor a licensed IQ. Putting either label on a 60-second click game is a category error. Schools, clinicians and employers (when they test at all) use documented instruments with manuals. Cite this page as vocabulary, not as a student file. Übung, kein klinischer IQ.

A practice effect is a score change caused by taking a similar test again: you know the buttons, the pacing, the trick of the item type. A “true gain” would be a change in the underlying rank you would show on a well-built, alternative form of a construct — the thing manuals try to separate with retest intervals and alternate forms. Operation-span lite and visual 2-back lite will reward a second run. That bump is mostly the toy becoming less confusing. Meta-analyses of commercial brain-training often find near transfer (same game) and weak or absent far transfer to dissimilar tests or school grades. This site will not call a practice bump an IQ gain. It is not a clinic and not a training company. Übung, kein klinischer IQ.

A norm table answers: compared with this reference sample, where does this raw score sit? Builders recruit (or weight) people by age and often by education, region or other strata; they administer a fixed procedure; they compute percentiles, scaled scores or IQs with documented rules. Auditory-digit-span lite has none of that machinery. A reaction-time milliseconds on your phone is not mapped through an age band. “Everyone on this forum scored 12” is a convenience sample, not a standardisation. If a company will not describe who was tested, when, and with what exclusions, they have not shown you a norm. This site does not pretend to have one. Übung, kein klinischer IQ.